Toluu’s tags, totally tremendous!  Today’s timesink: tagging Toluu totality!  Ok, enough of that, this really is great news.

Caleb Elston, Toluu’s founder, tells us that tagging was the most requested feature for Toluu.  I’m very impressed with the implementation as tagging really permeates the site now, it’s feels like a true integration, not a hacked together add on.   When adding tags, the auto-complete will cut down on typos.  Along with tagging you’ll see better sorting options on many pages.

A word of warning, if you reimport your OPML you will lose your exsisting tags so you’re gonna want to sync everything before you get started and then use the bookmarklet (or single add) to add new feeds to your Toluu account.

Let’s take a look at some screen shots:

Top Used Tags for a user now on their Profile

-

You can click Top Tags to see all of a user's tags. Notice the new sort options.

-

Click a tag to see all feeds that user has tagged with it

-

Quickly add tags from My Feeds, hover to get add button, click for tag dialog

-

Click a tag and see all the feeds with that tag

-

Click a feed and go to it's tab menu for all sorts of tagging goodness, including similar feeds to check out

I’m sure I missed some things but that’s a good rundown of some of the most important additions.  This is a big upgrade in usability for Toluu but it relies on Toluu users taking the time to tag their feeds, something that provides only a small amount of additional functionality for themselves.  As people use the tagging system you’ll see Toluu making changes to get the most bang out of it.  I’ll go ahead and predict that grouping of tags that are similar except for extraneous characters and plurals will be added.   Enough of me, go play with it yourself and get tagging – I need to find some new podcasts!

Related articles by Zemanta

• iTunes + Toluu = Podcast Love
• Toluu Helps You Like What Your Friends Like
• Toluu Pops It’s Collar With New Popup Tooltip
• RSS Day
• Toluu Releases Feed Preview

Toluu has a added a small new feature to your Activity Page that turns out to be a big usability enhancement, here’s what Caleb, Toluu’s founder had to say about it:

I found that many times I had no idea what a feed was about but, I didn’t want to click on it and then have to click back if I wasn’t interested I wanted a really quick way to get some more info so that is how the tooltip came to be it shows the 5 most recent post titles from the feed and you can click a title and go directly to the source

With this new enhancement the Activity page has just gotten much more useful, and it’s good news for bloggers as well.  Those of us who are total marketing geniuses and not only put 2 silent Ks in their blog name, but also give no context clues about the content, can now rest easier.  All you would have to do is hover over ‘The Knight Knetwork’ and you’d see my 5 latest posts, giving you a chance to visit a post with an interesting title and see what you really think about my writing and subject matter.  Here’s an idea of what you’ll see:

Kudos again to Toluu for adding enhancements that really increase the usabillity of the site, and don’t forget to Toluu ‘The Knight Knetwork’, those silent Ks actually speak volumes.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Subscribe or Not? Toluu Just Got Better at Helping You Decide
• Toluu Updates Architecture and Adds More Filtering Options
• Smart Social Media Marketing: Caleb Elston and Toluu
• iTunes + Toluu = Podcast Love

Toluu, the RSS sharing and suggestion site, can also be used for podcasts! A little known feature of iTunes will allow you to export a list of all the Podcasts you listen to into a format that Toluu can read and import. Here’s how:

- Right click the Podcast list in iTunes and select Export Song List to get a list of your podcasts:

- To export your podcast list in OPML be sure to select that file type from the drop down list:

- Import into to Toluu just as you would any other OPML file.

The more people do this the better chance you’ll get podcast recommendations so spread the word and import your own today! If you use an alternate program to manage podcasts try to find a way to export the list in an OPML format, Google is your friend here if you need help. Right now there isn’t anything in Toluu to label a feed as a podcast unless it’s already in the name. If items uploaded from iTunes were specifically labeled or if Toluu implements a tagging scheme, this could get easier.

PS – I have Toluu invites, leave a comment if you need one.  For more on Toluu check out my interview with Caleb Elston, the founder.

Image by aqhong via Flickr

Since participating in RSS Awareness Day I have found myself much more aware of the lack of RSS! There are so many things that are pushed to me by e-mail that I would rather have the option of pulling by RSS reader. I know both technologies have a push and a pull aspect but the bevy of e-mail notification tools make e-mail the pushier option of the two. I’m not after a mass switch here but options, give me more options! Anything on the web that can change should have an RSS feed available.

Here are some advances I would like to see:

• Social Networks – RSS is starting to show up more, but what these networks need are the options to filter by each item that can be updated and to create multiple feeds. For example if you are on Facebook you should be able to subscribe to an RSS feed(s) that you set up from your newsfeed. You might want one feed for everything and I might want everything in one feed except to peel off status updates to second feed.
• A widely implemented SRSS (Secure RSS) – Feeds of from your bank, credit card companies, and investment firms are among a few useful places for Secure RSS feeds, there are any number of other uses including private corporate feeds. If there is one single item needed to push RSS more to the mainstream, this is it.
• Advertisements – The ability to mass ignore posts in RSS also makes it the perfect vehicle for the spammy type e-mail services you may tolerate.  I like to see what Dell has for sale and the current prices on all the random computer gear at the new CompUSA.com, but I delete those e-mails unread for the most part, it would be much better to scan them and trash them in bulk in an RSS feed.
• DRSS (Dynamic RSS) – I don’t know if this is a coined phase or not, but this is a feature that’s just starting to pop up and that I hope to see a lot more of, an RSS feed that builds itself from a site’s content and your interests.  I currently get an e-mail from Bankrate.com when they write about 529 college savings plans, make this an RSS feed for me instead! Call it filtering or call it search, either way you’re making the feed dynamic for my interests.  With RSS bloat and purges this type of focused RSS will keep me reading and less frustrated.

These are my major wishes for RSS, what are yours?

Svetlana Gladkova is the Vice President of Business Development at Profy.com. Profy is a new and exciting entry into the hosted blog market that is aiming to outdo the current heavy hitters by building from the ground up as a one stop blogging, social network, and RSS reader. The social features and the greater customization and monetization options should put Profy in a good position after the service exits beta. There’s a lot more to recommend Profy and as long as users won’t scoff at Profy placing an ad on their free blogs, I think we’ll see a steady rise in traffic as users switch or supplement their other blogs with Profy. I do have a few Profy invites if you leave a comment I’ll see what I can do. If you want to see a Profy blog you can take a peek @ KnightKnetwork.Profy.com. Svetlana was kind enough to talk to me about Profy and share some of her thoughts about blogging in general:

What benefits do you see in going with a hosted blog service over self-hosting? Why should users choose Profy in particular? continue reading »